WWALS Watershed Coalition advocates for conservation and stewardship of the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, Little, and Suwannee River watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida through education, awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen activities.

Tag Archives: Tifton

On May 11, we met to organize the WWALS Advisory Committee.
Agriculture, Forestry, and Water were big topics.
Thanks to Joe West, Assistant Dean of the Campus at
the University of Georgia, Tifton, for many good suggestions of Committee members, and the use of his office for the meeting.

We will meet there again on Thursday, June 13, 2019.
If you would like to be a WWALS Advisor, helping us out with advocacy, events, legislation, and yes, undraising,
let us know.
See our
Vision,
Mission,
Goals,
Issues,
Outings and Events,
and Fundraising.
Don’t worry: nobody has to try to do all that.
Advisors can specialize.

Tifton, Georgia, May 1, 2019 —
“This was the first year a canoe finished first to win the $100 cash prize,”
said Bret Wagenhorst, main organizer of the BIG Little River Paddle Race, last Saturday, April 27, at Reed Bingham State Park.
“It was a two-person canoe of gentlemen from Gray, GA:
Wayne Hale and Terry Donahue.”

Dr. Wagenhorst added,
“Thanks to all the paddlers from across Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, as far away as Mexico, who came out on a glorious south GA
spring day to help raise money for the WWALS Watershed Coalition and
the Friends of Reed Bingham State Park group by paddling a scenic
and winding stretch of the Little River. Lots of fun in the sun for
friends and families.”

Online today
and in the paper Gainesville Sun this coming Sunday.
To paddle the most-affected stretch of the Withlacoochee River,
join us this Saturday morning.

A December upsurge of raw sewage spills from the city of Valdosta,
Georgia, has a dozen downstream counties organized into a task
force, demanding action from Florida state legislators. But what
action?

I recommend first getting a grip on the extent of the problem,
keeping that picture up to date and then funding fixes.

Update 2019-01-25: Added an HTML table of all spills in the Suwannee River Basin in Georgia since the beginning of 2015.

WWALS Science Committee Chair Tom Potter made this committee report to the
WWALS Quarterly Board Meeting of January 2019:

The Science Committee has focused on monitoring sewage spills from
Municipalities in the region. The primary data is the online
database provide by the GA EPD. The agency regularly compiles spill
volume, date, and, location across the state and posts the
information on-line.

WWALS played a central role in convincing EPD
to provide this data in a timely manner and has regularly posted
spill data on the WWALS website, wwals.net/issues/vww/ga-spills/. This a substantial improvement
over prior reporting systems and is contributing to timely reporting
of conditions that may adversely impact water quality and
recreational uses of streams and rivers.

The following graph
summarizes reported spill data in Quitman, Tifton and Valdosta and Continue reading →

Tifton, and any other cities: if you keep spilling from the same place
whenever there’s a big rain, maybe it’s not the rain that’s excessive.
Maybe your sewage infrastructure is inadequate and you should fix it.

Yet again into Agrirama Lake, Tifton spilled 8,500 gallons of raw sewage
yesterday (Sunday, January 6, 2019).
And, finally, a number of gallons Valdosta spilled from its Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant back on December 15, 2018.

As you can see, cities in the Atlanta Metro Area spilled more.
And in the table below you can see many more of them spilled.

But Valdosta spilled the most sewage and from the most locations:
six places, not just the one Valdosta told the public.
Plus we finally have
a total for the previous WWTP spill,
and all the others from the beginning of December, and those totals are not pretty.

Tifton spilled at three locations, adding up to 105,100 gallons of raw sewage
into the Little River watershed from the Agrirama Lift Station and from TC Gordon Road, and into the New River watershed at 26th St. & Ridge Ave., upstream from the Withlacoochee River.

Thomasville spilled 9,000 gallons into the Ochlockonee River watershed.
Macon spilled 2,400 gallons into the Ocmulgee River watershed.
Columbus spilled 9,260 gallons into the Chattahoochee River watershed,
although exactly when seems hard to determine.

The big winners were Atlanta, still ongoing, and Dekalb County, with a total of 42,260 gallons of raw sewage.

Valdosta, Lowndes County, and Quitman reported no new spills,
although many of Valdosta’s spills are still listed as ongoing.